Victor and his Monster
by Forkive
Summary: One dreary night in November, Victor created a monster. Instead of fleeing, though, he is determined to destroy it, and in his struggle sends them both falling from his room in Ingolstadt. Victor is crippled, helpless as his monster carries him into the forest... And a new future. A re-imagining of the basic story. Not a Victor/Monster pairing! T just in case.
1. Prologue: New Nightmares

_DISCLAIMER: I in no way own Frankenstein, nor any of its related works. Because, however, Frankenstein itself is public domain, neither does anybody else!_

_I hope you enjoy my own envisioning of Shelly's classic work. It always frustrated me how Victor always failed to grow a pair when it counted, so I decided to force some action upon him. If you like it, say so! Not many people get around to the Frankenstein fanfictions, so please be vocal when you do!_

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Prologue: A Different Nightmare

**"****Beautiful****? ****Great ****God****! ****His ****yellow ****skin ****scarcely ****covered ****the ****work ****of ****muscles ****and ****arteries ****beneath****; ****his ****hair ****was ****of ****a ****lustrous ****black****, ****and ****flowing****; ****his ****teeth ****of ****a ****pearly ****whiteness****; ****but ****these ****luxuriances ****only ****formed ****a ****more ****horrid ****contrast ****with ****his ****watery ****eyes****, ****that ****seemed ****almost ****of ****the ****same ****colour ****as ****the ****dun****-****white ****sockets ****in ****which ****they ****were ****set****, ****his ****shrivelled ****complexion ****and ****straight ****black ****lips****.**

**The ****different ****accidents ****of ****life ****are ****not ****so ****changeable ****as ****the ****feelings ****of ****human ****nature****. ****I ****had ****worked ****hard ****for ****nearly ****two ****years****, ****for ****the ****sole ****purpose ****of ****infusing ****life ****into ****an ****inanimate ****body****. ****For ****this ****I ****had ****deprived ****myself ****of ****rest ****and ****health****. ****I ****had ****desired ****it ****with ****an ****ardour ****that ****far ****exceeded ****moderation****; ****but ****now ****that ****I ****had ****finished****, ****the ****beauty ****of ****the ****dream ****vanished****, ****and ****breathless ****horror ****and ****disgust ****filled ****my ****heart****. ****Unable ****to ****endure ****the ****aspect ****of ****the ****being ****I ****had ****created****, ****I ****rushed ****out ****of ****the ****room ****and ****continued ****a ****long ****time ****traversing ****my ****bed****-****chamber****, ****unable ****to ****compose ****my ****mind ****to ****sleep****. ****At ****length ****lassitude ****succeeded ****to ****the ****tumult ****I ****had ****before ****endured****, ****and ****I ****threw ****myself ****on ****the ****bed ****in ****my ****clothes****, ****endeavouring ****to ****seek ****a ****few ****moments ****of ****forgetfulness****. ****But ****it ****was ****in ****vain****; ****I ****slept ****indeed****, ****but ****I ****was ****disturbed ****by ****the ****wildest ****dreams****..." **

~Frankenstein, Chapter 5

_I __found __myself __on __a __picnic__, __overlooking __the __formidable __cliffs __of __Mont __Blanc__. __Though __the __snow __whipped __around __me__, __I __myself __was __warm__, __for __my __dearest __friends __Henry __and __Elizabeth __were __with __me__, __and __no __cold __could __reach __us__. __My __father__, __Justine__, __and __even __little __William __sat __a __small __distance __away__, __laughing __with __a __vigor __I __had __forgotten __since __I __commenced __my __dark __endeavor __two __years __ago__. _

_Even __as __the __thought __of __it __crossed __my __mind__, __though__, __a __great __shadow __fell __over __the __ridge__. __The __chill __stroked __my __neck __and __clenched __my __heart __in __its __unfeeling __claws__. __Petrified__, __it __was __only __with __the __greatest __force __of __will __that __I __faced __the __frozen __plains__. __Lo__! __Advancing __from __the __jaws __of __winter __was __none __other __than __my __own __creation__! __I __tried __to __cry __out__, __but __no __voice __would __stir __within __me__, __and __my __feet __themselves __were __frozen __to __the __ground__. __I __watched__, __with __mute __agony__, __as __the __monster __squeezed __the __life __from __those __closest __to __me__, __one __by __one__, __scattering __their __broken __corpses __in __the __snow__. __As __it __turned __away__, __its __grisly __task __complete__, __I __at __last __felt __the __rage __stir __within __me __and__, __with __a __mighty __howl__, __lunged __at __the __fearsome __demon__, __throwing __it__, __and __myself__, __into __the __bitter __abyss__..._

I emerged from my midnight terror with a burning truth: This monster, born of my own two hands, would kill everyone that I loved on this earth. For their sakes, as much as my own, it had to be destroyed by those same two hands. Now determined to end my work with whatever was left of my ailing body, I espied by the sickly yellow light of the moon a fearsome and gaunt visage, twisted into a leer above my bedposts. It was upon me!

My heart reinforced by the lives for which it was accountable, I sprung from my sheets, driving back the fiend with hitherto unknown ferocity. Broadsided by my sudden attack, its uncoordinated bulk scattering dressers and tables in a most tumultuous crash. The fiend's confusion was evident, and it struggled weakly against my unexpected offense. With one last fearsome cry, I drove it through the grand window overlooking the forest, and held it there, teetering over the long plunge towards the unforgiving ground. Yet my hesitation, as I stared into its sallow eyes, even then focused and questioning, was to be my undoing.

I heard three frantic knocks at the door behind me, which, as I turned in surprise of my own, swung open. In the doorway, armed with a sabre and a candlestick, stood Henry Clerval, uncomprehending of the scene displayed before him. Unguarded, my strength wavered, the monster pulled me off of the ledge.

"Victor!"

I saw his light shrink to a pinpoint as the monster and I tumbled down. I felt weightless and unbearably free. Never would the demon grasp a neck in its hideous fingers, and never would I feel the pains of my great sin. I waited breathlessly for heaven's embrace.

But it was not heaven that was to embrace me. A sickening crack and an unbearable pain splintered through my spine. As I lay there, legs unmoving and tears choking out my screams, the monster lifted me into its arms, and I at last understood the evil I had created.

"Demon! You, who hath stolen my happiness, my health, and my best years from me! You, whose very existence threatened the lives of those I hold most dear! You, who even now denies me oblivion's embrace and carries me into your foul abode! You have destroyed everything that defines me, and so I define you! I name you, fiend! You are Frankenstein!"

That twisted leer upon its face once more, it carried me into the dark, unknowable forest.

_From __the __journal __of __Victor __Frankenstein__,_

_Author __of __his __own __Nemesis_

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_One last note: This prologue is the only part yet completed. In other words, it's still entirely open to suggestions! Also, don't expect terribly regular updates. I'm rather lazy._


	2. Chapter 1: The Forest Near Ingolstadt

Hello again, dear reader(s?)! Please remember that use of cellphones while driving is illegal in California, that brushing your teeth twice daily is likely to improve dental health, and that _Frankenstein_ is public domain. With this established, I (in no way whatsoever) claim ownership.

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Chapter 1: The Forest Near Ingolstadt

_"It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being; all the events of that period appear confused and indistinct. A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before i learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses. By degrees, I remember, a stronger light pressed upon my nerves, so that I was obliged to shut my eyes. Darkness then came over me and troubled me, but hardly had I felt this when, by opening my eyes, as I now suppose, the light poured in upon me again. I walked and, I believe, descended, but presently I found a great alteration in my sensations. Before, dark and opaque bodies had surrounded me, impervious to my touch or sight; but I now found that I could wander on at liberty, with no obstacles which I could not either surmount or avoid. The light became more and more oppressive to me, and the heat wearying me as I walked, I sought a place where I could receive shade. This was the forest near Ingolstadt..." _Frankenstein, Chapter 11

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First, there is fire. That much, I remember clearly. I escape the oppressive light of day only to wander, purposeless, through the havens of moist shadow. At length, darkness falls once again upon my surroundings, and I am forced to contend against once more against the elements. The storm-shrouded night and the bitter wind that howls wicked and wild through rain-bent branches falls upon untried ears and unknowing eyes. Feet traverse a yielding ocean of damp pine needles, but I cannot understand them to be my own. Even the bundle that shivers and screams in my arms, the bundle I need to love me at all costs, does not yet actualize as the man I come to call father.

I walk, in other words, in ignorance of my own existance. I possess the form of an adult, but my mind is still infantile, animal, unaware of the boundary that divides the self from the other. Each footstep falls of its own accord, driven by desires I cannot quite capture. How can I? I have no words to hold them with! Yet, still I move forward. Something draws me through the spiralling towers of green, across the waves of pine needles, damp with the relentless rain, despite the wind beating in my ears, despite the lightning that howls with unprovoked fury, despite the weight that strains my untried arms; Something draws me, though I have know idea what "me" is.

That's when I see it, dancing between the trees. Like nothing else I've ever seen, it seems to laugh in spite of the storm, ignoring the wind and the rain and the lightning itself. I know not its nature, but a primal impulse pulls me in its direction. As I get ever closer, the feeling of sunlight, of the brightness in my earlier wanderings, wraps itself around my skin. Victor, who for some time has been vibrating wildly, is abating in his trembling the more I approach the flickering being of light. It is only when I am standing right next to it that I notice no water is falling upon me. An enclosure, seemingly of the earth I tread underfoot.

That is how I found the barrow, and the miraculous eternal flame that dwells within.

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Victor once explained to me the nature of fire-that it is the result of oxygen's interaction with certain compounds, a reaction which releases energy in the form of light and extreme heat. Though men typically use wood as fuel, there are certain gases that rise from deep within the earth, gases that burn more cleanly and brightly than felled lumber. Fires that begin over veins of such gas never run out of fuel, and have been known to burn for hundreds, even thousands of years. Some ancient peoples went so far as to worship them; The towering barrow ensconcing the fire, no doubt, was erected by the teutonic warrior priests that once haunted this forest of night. I can now understand how incredibly fortunate we were to discover it. Without that constant flame, Victor and I would have died wandering through the immeasurable wilderness of pine.

I grew up in that tomb of miraculous light. My early days, drifting past like the clouds, seemed to exist only in terms of my increasing awareness of them. Letters, numbers, and constellations wheeled above my head, like conifer seeds borne aloft on an ever expanding thermal. Victor taught me how to read, how to count, and, perhaps most importantly for him, how to listen and comprehend. I was the one who gathered food, who boiled the water, who wrapped his torn back with bandages of vines; He rested, gathering his strength for some great, unfathomable purpose. Though one might decide this unfair, or go so far as to label it an, "unequal distribution of labor" (I shudder at the thought), you must realize that, for me it was not so. More than that-it was impossible. Lacking a standard of comparison, I could not envision any other reality.

How does one describe the springtime to a child born in autumn? His world is auburn and gold, with leaves supplanting rain and a shadow-born wind to tickle his nose. He cannot understand that the forest around him is dying, cannot fathom that the sun is abandoning him for fairer climes. Would it even be possible to describe rippling oceans of green, sunlight that slips into the shade and warms even the nighttime darkness? Decay is the only thing he has ever known.

That is how I saw Victor. His feet did not move, certainly. His skin retained a far different hue, yes. He did not even possess a body of my size. None of this, however, I attributed to any deficiency on his part, but to some fundamental difference in identity. Surely, the sunset must not be held to the pine as some concrete standard of perfection!

Those were my beliefs. In those precious months, those convictions upheld my very understanding of the world with utmost perfection. For the first and last time in my life, everything was right.

Which is why it started to go wrong.

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I had been learning steadily for some time now. Impressions and sensations, for so long intangible and primal, had begun at last to coalesce into thoughts and words. Sensing my newfound capability, Victor's lessons began to increase in complexity. I was a voracious learner; it is not so hard, with no other occupation to accompany the sun's progress through the cosmos above.

The previous day, Victor and I had discovered something peculiar. In the farthest, darkest corner of the barrow, a partially exposed effigy of sticks and stone, greater by far than even my own imposing frame, rested in silence. A wicker man, Victor called it. Though buried beneath a mountain of ash, it's weathered granite face was crowned with a massive circlet of gold. Impassive eyes stared in contemplation at the light, as if considering how best to quench the eternal fire and return the world to slumber. Despite that, all I could think was how similar it looked to Victor. It had caused me to question. Victor and I were one thing; now a third being, so much like us in form had appeared. What, exactly, were we?

I would not leave Victor in peace for the next three nights, until he condescended to explain to me the field of taxonomy. There were differences, he claimed, between the trees and the shrubs, the squirrels and the great brown bears that I had so often turned aside with my not-lacking strength, differences that defined them and identified them as unique upon this Earth. Of the specie and genii, the families and kingdoms that held within them the sum of life.

The knowledge was intoxicating. Such vast complexity, such intricate weavings within the wiring of the world! And in the center of it all, God's chosen creation, Man! What wonder to behold!

All the while, my question polished itself in the recesses of my heart. Victor was a human. The old dead king was a human. What was I?

This troubled me. In this phase of delicate self-definition, in which the mind yet attempts to create for itself identity, how unnerving to discover that one HAS no identity! Many were the nights I puzzled over this quandary. One taste of knowledge had opened the floodgates, and now my heart was wearied by doubts and concerns. I implored the moon and the stars, the trees and the great blue sky, but they remained scornfully silent. I turned to Victor, in the end, though perhaps I would have been better pursuing the counsel of the sky.

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"Do not trouble yourself with such things. You _are_-is that not enough for you?"

"No, Victor, it is not! I have seen you name the things which shine in the night, which shine in the day, and which crawl upon the earth in their untold numbers. I have seen from you wonders to strange to be believed, seen you exercise dominion over the forest itself. Yet, in the midst of all these things, you have not named me!"

"Is that truly all?" Victor seemed confused. "But I have already named you! You are Frankenstein!"

"You know fully well that's not what I mean! I am Frankenstein as much as you are Victor, but beneath that you are a human, and you have a place in this world. I have nothing!" The fire between us was beginning to burn more brightly, casting darker shadows upon the barrow walls. "What AM I?"

Victor was trembling with rage. "Fine. Here is the truth you pursue with such desperation. I don't KNOW what you are! You have no place because no such place exists! Within this God-given world of light, you were wrought in the darkness! You may search until the trees have rotted away, and the corpses of the stars have torn this land to pieces, but you will NEVER find a name!"

My vision was supplanted by red, and by fury broke all bounds. "LIAR!" I bellowed, and made to step across the searing heat to force from him truth, or lies, or any alternative to the horror he had set before me. My first step, however, scattered sparks across the enclosure, and a terrible thing began to occur.

In the corner of the barrow, the ash began to burn. Sparks melted through the ancient earth towards the heart of that terrible effigy, and as though reanimated by those fragments of pure energy, it began to stir.

Layers of ash fell from the wicker man as it rose, and the form of its body at last became clear-it was a cage of countless corpses, skeletons and mummies frozen in various states of decay by the stifling ash. Warped by the rising heat, surely, but to me they seemed to grasp at me through their cage. The creation's mass rose, held by twin pillars of bones and clawed arms that scraped against the walls of the barrow, until its granite brow reached the ceiling far above. Those eyes, heartless and dead, stared blankly upon the two helpless beings at its knees. I could not tell whether the howl I heard was the fire, the corpses, or the all-encompassing terror that beat against the inside of my head.

The wicker man groaned, and its foot lifted, then fell. It took another step, shaking the walls and the ground beneath us. And another. Its taloned hand reached towards us, seeking to crush us within the inferno of its grasp.

It was fire and death, and it would consume everything. All words left me, but Victor whispered just two.

"Save me."

I grabbed Victor and fled from that place, driven by heat and quakes and a roar like undying thunder into the darkness. Even after the trees began to thin, even after we burst into the open, moon-washed fields, I didn't stop running, and I didn't look back.

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Within the rippling shadows of the forest, coiled between roots and fallen needles of pine, rested a hollow, hidden from scornful sun and unrelenting storm alike, an ancient stone chamber buried beneath the soaring trees, guarded by a ring of ponderous megaliths. A Germanic chief in some era long forgotten had erected this mound for his tomb; Carved from the bones of the primeval forest, this tomb lay forgotten, and in time, the forest consumed it once more. The skeleton once resting within had long since crumbled, and the dust danced amidst the beams of the setting sun. Centuries erased the barrow from human memory, and it slept through mortar shells and tank treads alike. It is not until the 21st century that four students, poring frantically through ancient manuscripts in search of a last-minute thesis, stumble across it once more. Eager to earn their place within the histories of the world, they wander between the towering trees, armed only with their minds and the meager remains of their student loans. Against all odds, they find it. These men and women marvel at the untouched treasures, the intricate carvings nestled safely within the moss. Alone, this barrow is more than enough to recompense their endeavor. They find, however, that another mystery is at hand: Gigantic footprints arrayed around a natural eternal flame, soulless stone eyes in a lifeless granite face, and notes, in still-legible German, scratched onto a small corner of the wall, telling of a fearful scientist, the monster he birthed, and the beginning of a voyage most perilous. They decide to wait before reporting the barrow; It seems they may have found a far more interesting doctorate...

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_It's like playing a literary "Where's Waldo?"; How many metaphors have I squeezed into one passage? Hell if I know._

_I've been working on this chapter for some time. Beyond Frankenstein itself, I owe a good deal of inspiration to "Ardennes Forest," from "The Temple of El Alamein" manga by Hoshino Yukinobu._

_Let it not be said that I'm not a completely ungrateful hack-off. I'm plenty grateful, all right._

_Many thanks to those who have favorited, followed, and reviewed the story so far, even though it's been essentially a half-idea. I'm hoping this chapter has enough meat on it to be enjoyable. If you like what you see, review! If you don't, review anyways! I can only get better with your help!_

_Three months late and making no promises,_

_~Forkive_


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